We're a family that believes you can do things your own way, and this blog is about our adventures doing just that. We try to spend our money thriftily, be healthy, make things instead of buying them, enjoy the simple pleasures of life, and raise our kids to have values that go against the flow of what they're taught by zombie Hitler. Actually just the things they learn from a consumer-oriented world, but that's bad too.

Saturday, November 5, 2016

Everybody knows I love a challenge and so to get myself blogging regularly again I'm going to do this A-Z blogging thing where I have to post about something starting with each letter.

First up is A (I'm a genius!) and a post about Apps I use.

Google Keep

Keep - It's a note-taking app for anything and everything. I use it to keep track of our monthly budget mostly. JD and I can see what each other has spent so we can keep a running total and not go over what we want to spend. The best thing about it is you can add to it offline. You can make checklists with it too. I use it to make a list of errands when I go into town or things I need from the shop.

Loop Habits

Loop Habits is an app to get you into the habit of doing something regularly. I use it to keep track of how often I'm doing the things I want to make time for each day. After I've done something consistently for 20 or so I days I stop tracking it because it's become a habit. I've used it to make sure I read every day, do exercise, a few minutes of yoga, eat well, complete brain training, learn a language. Basically anything you want to do more of on a regular basis.

Zombies, Run!

Next is my favourite exercise app. In Zombies, Run! you're a runner for a town of people who survived the Zombie Epidemic. They need you to collect items, find supplies, lead zombies away and all kinds of other missions. Voice actors set the scene and let you know what's happening in the storyline with each mission. You just have to run (or walk). Sometime during each mission you'll hear zombies and that's your cue to move faster to escape them. I usually speed walk for the most part and then run when I hear zombies getting close. You can set the length of run to whatever you want, play your own music in between scenes and use items you collect to build the town up in an app minigame. It's fun! I find running or walking on my own boring so this is perfect for me, it's kind of like watching a TV show while you exercise and it makes exercising enjoyable for me.

SwiftKey

Swiftkey is a customisable keyboard for your phone. You can change the colour of the keyboard and change the key size if you want. It's predictive text is much better than the default keyboard too. You can swipe type instead of tapping each key and you can customise the layout of the keyboard too. Basically it's just more choices for the phone keyboard if you use it a lot. It even gives you interesting stats on your typing practises. Apparently I've added 6,229 words to my swiftkey vocbulary since I got it and the heart eyes emoji is my most used! There's probably more you can do that I haven't discovered yet too.

Twilight

Twilight is an app everybody should be using. It cleverly adapts your screen's brightness to the time of day making it easier on your eyes. This is especially good in the evening as it changes to a red filter instead of the usual blue light which research shows makes sleep slower to reach. It does this by being in snyc with your local sunrise and sunset. It's a simple idea that works well and I'd hate to go back to my screeen's blue brightness now.

So, those are my favourite apps at the moment. What is your favourite app?